Veterans' Health Care: Improvements Needed to Ensure That Budget Estimates Are Reliable and That Spending for Facility Maintenance Is Consistent with Priorities

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "During fiscal years 2006 through 2012, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) had higher than estimated resources available for facility maintenance and improvement--referred to as non-recurring maintenance (NRM); these resources accounted for the $4.9 billion in VA's NRM spending that exceeded budget estimates. The additional resources came from two sources. First, VA spent less than it estimated on non-NRM, facility-related activities such as administrative functions, utilities, and rent, which allowed VA to spend over $2.5 billion more than originally estimated. Lower spending for administrative functions, utilities, and rent accounted for most of the resources estimated but not spent on non-NRM activities. Given that VA has consistently overestimated the costs of such activities in recent years, VA's budget estimates for its non-NRM activities may not be reliable. Second, more than $2.3 billion of the higher than estimated spending on NRM can be attributed to VA having higher than estimated budget resources available. In some years VA received higher appropriations from Congress than requested and supplemental appropriations for NRM--such as those included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The additional budget resources VA used for NRM also included transfers of funds from the agency's appropriations account that funds health care services.